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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29739783">The Shivers</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceanbreeze7/pseuds/Oceanbreeze7'>Oceanbreeze7</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alex Rider Needs a Hug, Alex Rider is a Mess, Alex can't help the fact he gets held hostage and subsequently gets the mood swings, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Kinda?, Parent Yassen Gregorovich, Recreational Drug Use, We got ALL THE GOOD HURT, Withdrawal, and Yassen is baffled by this, and then BAM, we got WHUMP, we got angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:14:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,330</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29739783</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceanbreeze7/pseuds/Oceanbreeze7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Heroin makes him into the person he wishes Ian could see, the person who never argued back or shouted and said things like ‘<i>I hate you</i>!’.</p><p>Heroin makes him the kind of person he wishes he was. Heroin makes his life worth living.</p><p>Heroin builds up a tolerance fast.</p><p>AR Prompt: Day 26: "Recovery"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Yassen Gregorovich &amp; Alex Rider</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>139</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>AR Febuwhump 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Shivers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, I actually messed up the date for submission. This was supposed to be for the 26th of Febwhump, but I thought it was for the 28th. So I had to basically cut my main idea super super short, and binge write this in maybe a few hours over one day and during an online zoom call.<br/>It isn't where I want it to be, but It's good enough for you all to get the feels.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>For many people who experiment with drugs, heroin is an extreme letdown. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not with a needle and a tourniquet and an admirable set of balls to try </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>for your first time- but the other ways weren’t that scary to talk or think about. Alex wasn’t necessarily a connoisseur of drugs, but he had been hit by horse tranquillizers or accidentally knocked back ecstasy admittedly a few times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heroin, the first time he stomached the nerve to try it alone in his bedroom, was very underwhelming. There was more anxiety and rush in finding a paper to roll and paranoia in locking his door twice. Snorting it was a lesson in choking and floundering like a bloody idiot, but the drug itself wasn’t...extraordinary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> It feels good, chill. It makes you happy, but the same sort of gentle calm a nice experience or a really good book. It reminded him of learning to snowboard on holiday with Ian, or the first time he went scuba diving and came up laughing and breathless despite the oxygen tank.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heroin doesn’t stand up to the terrifying spooky reputation, it’s just calm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obviously, the bad reputation was a lie. Heroin isn’t scary at all, it’s soothing and a small spark that brightens the dull monotony of a day. It’s not addictive like everyone thinks. It doesn’t leave you dumb and drooling, too blissed to think or function. It doesn’t tell you and compel you to set things on fire or stay up all night and day and hallucinate like meth does to those on the telly. It doesn’t give you a hangover like alcohol. The first time, he woke up and distinctly thought, </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘oh, what a nice drug.’</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And the next day everything is normal. No headache or nausea or the occasionally sick feeling from too much cough syrup. There’s a slight afterglow, a little remnant of the relaxing calm from the night before. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The weekend comes, and there’s all sorts of ways he could screw himself over. Drink and celebrate a little too hard, nurse a headache and migraine for the rest of the day before being shipped out again. Or he could head out in public and ultimately fuck up somehow leading to more drama and the police being called from a minor argument escalating and Tom’s disappointed face. There’s all those sorts of things he could do, but he liked heroin. It didn’t screw him over, he could still think perfectly clearly. No hangover or migraine, no feeling like shit later or verbal lashing over all his problems. He was still awake, and it left him happy and content with life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t depressed, but there weren’t that many times he felt utterly content and happy. There weren’t many opportunities to go cloud watching or fly a kite. He couldn’t remember the last time he went to a park or a beach and had no stress hanging over his shoulders. He knew heroin didn’t fix that, but also, it didn’t screw him over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was fine and utterly gentle and nice. Tom commented on how playful he was, how nice and considerate and how rare it was for him to be in such a good mood. He didn’t mind cleaning the dishes or mopping the floor, he helped an old lady with fishing out exact change at the corner store. He paid for another person’s bus ticket. He was a better person on the weekends now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has responsibilities too, or rather he gets shoved into doing things that are required. He can’t work when hungover or stumbling into walls- but when he gets picked up unexpectedly on a Saturday night, he’s given a briefing and can’t find that bit of hate that normally pokes up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead of being grumpy and bitter or depressed while avoiding gunfire, he’s just...</span>
  <em>
    <span>happy. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He’s cackling, laughing and breaking power wires and finding his objective faster than most missions. He isn’t as much a foul-mouthed child, he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>better </span>
  </em>
  <span>now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything is fine and the world is beautiful, and Mrs. Jones smiles at him and says she is proud of his work. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s raining and dark, it’s 5:30 in the morning and he’s crammed in an external storage case on the top of a RangeRover sneaking into a potential crime syndicate boss’ mansion. He would have been furious and sore. He would have a headache and feel carsick. He would be angry and hate everything. He would be wondering how his life turned into such a fucking disaster that he’s stuck in a terrible situation-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But no, no everything is fine. Life is beautiful. The raindrops are little thumps on the hard plastic shell and each is different but so similar like each individual instrument in an orchestra playing the same note. Humanity is beautiful, existence is beautiful, and he knows he’s shoved in a glorified suitcase potentially about to die but in a brief snippet of his entire life, he’s found peace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heroin is a wonder drug. Heroin is better than anything else- better than exercise and water or alcohol binges and a judgemental therapist from MI6.  Heroin makes him into the person he wishes Ian could see, the person who never argued back or shouted and said things like </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘I hate you!’</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heroin makes him the kind of person he wishes he was. Heroin makes his life worth living.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heroin builds up a tolerance fast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It starts subtle and small. It’s not that he can’t feel without it, but what he does feel is so disgustingly tainted with frustration and anger and he hates that side of him, he’s afraid of how angry he is. He doesn’t love anymore, he knows he’ll never be nice to people without it. Tom doesn’t like him when he’s angry and shouting. Mrs. Jones comments on his behaviour and disapproves when he’s bitter and close to crying. Civilians die when he doesn’t use it, and he feels like he’s dying also.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gets sick more now, but it’s a thing he’s willing to compromise. He broke his ankle almost a year ago and when he was immobile, he was frustrated and lazy like any teenager was. He glutted and gained fat and needed a new size outfit from Smithers and he noticed all the comments the tactical squadrons mentioned under their breath. He’s not upset that now he gets sick, he has plenty of cold medicine and tissues for his running nose and occasional nosebleeds are only because the air is dry. He’s melting off old fat he couldn’t afford to keep and feels faster and lighter and happier than he has been in years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> He never had to pay for heroin, he had it since the start and that stupid mission where he pretended to be a spoiled brat just like the Pleasure’s all over again. Dressed in a sweater and an unused knife in his slacks, pretending to be rich and dangerous when all the idiot children in the small group were impulsive and naive to ever think themselves dangerous.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One of them had been the son of a drug smuggler, and under Mrs. Jones orders he was supposed to get close to him and ultimately find the storage of the goods. Straight clean quality, the kind that killed movie stars at parties where they fell in the pool and drowned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The kids (stupid teenagers his same age) knew openly well about the drugs, baiting one another to take a pill or a line on the glass table. Alex thought, </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘you all are going to die before you’re old,’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>and plastered a smile and snorted what he presumed to be cocaine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thought logically, a bit of a jump wouldn’t interfere with his mission </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>badly. Maybe give him an edge, maybe help him think quicker or move faster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After ten minutes, he wasn’t sure it was anything. After fifteen minutes, Alex thought </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘oh, I remember this,’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>and laughed openly and delightedly at the sheer brilliance of Doctor Grief beyond the grave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They asked if it was his first time, and Alex laughed and said it wasn’t. How else would you make a child confess and be honest when dealing with liars and thieves and furious heirs to monopolies on diamonds and drugs?</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>‘Get rid of all that anger,’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>he thought happily with a fond sort of retrospection. </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘It couldn’t be that unusual for all those deviants to have heroin in their system.’</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t really remember much of the experience, but he remembered laughing and how calm everything was. He remembered all the questions they asked him, and how he never answered because it took a special sort of thrill to find delight in causing chaos- and Alex had long since mastered the ability to grin and giggle when starting metaphorical and literal fires.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heroin felt nice then, and then after, and until then where Alex was splayed out on his bed on a Thursday night, knowing he’d be shipped out in days or hours and had no intention of moving until. Tom didn’t like him when he was angry, so Tom wouldn’t come around until the weekend if Alex answered the door. Jack was back in America because Alex was a responsible young adult with a freezer bag of heroin shoved in his closet from that mission a while ago. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heroin feels nice, that’s all there is to it. Feeling made time stretch blissfully longer, and Alex knew his life could and would end suddenly without warning. Heroin made his life worth it, and people liked him more when he was high and gentle- </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>liked him more when he smiled and wasn’t so quick to bite.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew, logically, that this could be a problem and he should quit. But it wasn’t a problem yet, and he didn’t fuck up when he was high. He had nosebleeds and sometimes his head hurt and when he went a while between life felt so </span>
  <em>
    <span>heavy </span>
  </em>
  <span>and he hated the meltdowns in hotel rooms in foreign countries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d quit when he fucked up, and lucky for Alex, he didn’t tend to fuck up.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Alex fucked up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was called in and sent out within hours of a mission briefing. A nice easy mission- a new player trying to access the dark web and for the briefest of moments, the IP address wasn’t hidden locking them down locationally to a single apartment building consisting of possibly a hundred rooms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The address kept hopping from there, impossible to narrow down any further. Sneaking operatives into the building would only cause their timid new bird to fly the coop, maybe attempt the fire escape and dramatically splat onto the pavement. It was more important for their new player to remain safe and unharmed, with the new key to the dark web at Alex’s disposal so he could send MI6 the new encryption key for access and see what SCORPIA’s new recruitment flyers looked like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex </span>
  <em>
    <span>hadn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>expected the moment he picked the lock on the door of one promising apartment, for a hard object to slam into his neck and send him careening to the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After twenty minutes of minor scuffing and some biting on Alex’s part, he was firmly tied via both rope and what looked like a bedsheet to a sturdy dining room chair directly across the tiny open studio apartment. Alex scowled huffing openly and loudly and contemplated his chances of waddling to the glass terrace and surviving a fall from the thirteenth floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Either accidentally or just to be petty, the so-called timid-bird had his computer in the far corner, directly within Alex’s eyesight. Alex scowled, rocking side to side on his creaky chair, threatening to tip it over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you stop that?” the baby hacker asked him tiredly, looking every part like a man unexpected for the labour of parenthood. “I’m trying to </span>
  <em>
    <span>work.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re looking at a website where people are selling breastmilk,” Alex snarled back, feeling itchy and miserable. “And before that, it was access to criminal files!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is the </span>
  <em>
    <span>dark web,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>the man stressed tiredly, “there is a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot </span>
  </em>
  <span>of weird stuff.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex wriggled loudly, squeaking dangerously close to a distraction. The weird man at the computer sighed loudly, then clicked a link consisting only of numbers that appeared to take him to an odd occult page where you could purchase oil drums of blood and weird-looking knives. The choir chanting made the tinny laptop speakers turn static on the higher notes, but it droned out Alex’s annoying rattling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, the insult fell to the next man of importance in the room, patiently sitting at the tiny kitchen table completing a sudoku puzzle in pen. Yassen didn’t bother looking up, he merely elevated his voice and said, “be still, Alex.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Never,” Alex countered, rattling violently in his chair, “I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>bored.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>working,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>the man at the computer said, visibly stressed, “you know how hard it is to find encryption keys in the middle of this junk?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex almost floundered, accusing him openly, “you’re internet shopping bloody bibles!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t help the fact some people will buy this!” the man almost shouted back, although it sounded a lot more like whining. “I’m just trying to find the damn link, the SCORPIA tech team put it past seven keys of encryption. I’m only on the internet shopping page three!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen made a small hum, writing a number Alex couldn’t see with pinpoint accuracy in his puzzle book. Alex felt the urge to roar like a lion and thrash about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want me to come over there and show you this?” the hacker man asked tiredly, waving one hand towards the laptop. “I doubt you have any idea how code breaking works, so you can look at the pretty pictures of old people swimming in breastmilk while I’m looking at the source code.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen made the smallest noise, quickly swallowed up as he scribbled something else in his puzzle book. The hacker man waited patiently, then rolled his eyes and picked up the laptop, snatching a small device to relocate to a different corner of the room before waking over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What was that?”Alex asked curiously, jerking his head to the tiny device.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A dongle,” the man said breezily, acting like the name itself wasn’t ridiculous. “Finds wifi in the area, gotta keep jumping so the police don’t show up and make this room a </span>
  <em>
    <span>redrum</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex felt dumb as the man dragged a chair over to plop down and show Alex his screen. Sure enough, Alex had no idea what half of the computer screen meant or said, since it was entirely code or strange software running frantically.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wow,” Alex said dumbly, “that really </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>an old man in a bathtub full of breastmilk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The world is made of freaks,” the hacker said sagely, “my name is Trevor. Welcome to hell.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t completely horrible. The apartment was agonizingly small, and Yassen had eyes on him the entire time. Eventually, he was untied, given the freedom to use the washroom with the door kept open, and told to sit on the bed in the corner far away to avoid interfering with Trevor’s odd work. One website became an auction site for human trafficking, to which Trevor silently got up and left Alex to take his seat at the original desk. Alex was thankful for that, he didn’t want to see how some people justified the price of human beings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Food came from the fridge in the tiny kitchen, to which </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yassen </span>
  </em>
  <span>prepared silently. Alex thought it was incredibly strange, how an assassin could plate frozen lasagna aesthetically pleasing with plastic spoons being the only cutlery provided.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex was starting to wonder why everything felt like a cheap hostage movie. He was nearly done with the lasagna (frustratingly good) when the headache that had been slowly developing behind his eye started to poke him needily. He grunted, wriggling back further on the single bed in the studio apartment, pressing his head against the cheap headboard with significant pressure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen looked at him with cold eyes, staring eerily like a cat at four in the morning. Alex shrugged one shoulder, closing both eyes as he cradled his food baby. He muttered a quiet, “headache.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a while, Alex had to forcibly remind himself to open and relax his jaw. The pressure that had been aching near his ears released with a nearly audible sound, but his headache hadn’t quite kicked the bucket yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sound of typing was driving him up a metaphorical wall. The monotony of occasional mouse clicking and periodic typing was making his ears hurt. The soft scratching of a pen on cheap paper eventually compelled Alex to hop to his feet jerkily and begin pacing across the studio.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen tracked him silently, poised and ready for a strike that wouldn’t come. Trevor glanced over his shoulder, then muttered something quietly and went back to his website where you could purchase American social security numbers. Alex was irritated, bristling with a level of pent-up energy he normally expressed through random walks or jumping out of windows on missions. He was used to </span>
  <em>
    <span>moving, </span>
  </em>
  <span>to fighting tooth and claw to escape.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m bored,” Alex complained, pacing the short studio flat from one wall to the other, staying a safe distance away from Trevor and Yassen to make sure they didn’t interpret it as a threat. Alex whined, “there’s nothing to </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>in here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take a nap,” Trevor suggested, paying him no mind in his hunt across the dark web.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex puffed his cheeks, then squished the air out in a loud annoying sound. Yassen barely moved, completely unaffected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex bristled, frustrated and annoyed. MI6 sent him in for something nice and simple, not bothering with communication devices or elaborate tricks because </span>
  <em>
    <span>no, </span>
  </em>
  <span>this was supposed to be a walk in the park. Alex had taken down maniacs, he had saved the </span>
  <em>
    <span>world </span>
  </em>
  <span>and now he was trapped inside like a grounded little kid. Even </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ian </span>
  </em>
  <span>had thrown some books inside, or something for Alex to </span>
  <em>
    <span>do.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex bristled, spinning on his heel, and in a flare of frustration, he kicked the wall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It dented the plaster and drywall but didn’t do anything that Yassen could interpret as openly hostile. That didn’t deter him, because the next thing Alex realized he had a hand on the back of his neck ramming him forward with a weird jab between his shoulder blades, effectively slamming him against the wall without so much pressure it would hurt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It stunned and surprised Alex before it could ever be considered painful. He balked, baffled at the feel of plaster on one cheek. Then, he felt irritation bristle and explode like a porcupine crossed with a shotgun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Get </span>
  <em>
    <span>off </span>
  </em>
  <span>me!” Alex hissed, jerking his shoulders to clumsily knock his collarbone against the wall. He kicked a bit, throbbing his knee against the wall as he struggled to find Yassen’s instep. The damn assassin had his legs spread safely out of reach, practically posing stupidly with Alex wriggling angrily under his hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop destroying property,” Yassen said calmly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sucked on his tongue, trying to gather a glob of spit large enough to offend Yassen. With a bit of childish delight, he hacked and arched his neck enough to spit a bit off-center on Yassen’s shiny black shoe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen was still already, but Alex liked to imagine it worked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was childish and unsanitary,” Yassen said to him, voice carefully void of inflection. All thrill and delight at pissing off the man vanished under the brutal fist of </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘fuck you!’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>shrieking loudly in Alex’s head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex was many things, and petty was at the top of the list. If Yassen didn’t like him breaking the wall, then he would bloody break that wall. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took the man a second to realize what Alex intended, then a second longer for both of them to really comprehend. Alex’s left knee stung brightly, but he had busted a nice grapefruit-size chunk of drywall out where he rammed it through. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen said slowly, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>why </span>
  </em>
  <span>are you testing me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I like pissing you off,” Alex snapped back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen blinked slowly, then yanked Alex away from the wall by the back of his shirt. Alex stumbled slightly, his knee hurting viciously as he put weight on it, but he refused to falter. Adrenaline buzzed quickly, the hazy thrum of </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘this is it, finally! Okay, the stairwell is out the door to the left-.’</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen said weirdly, “you’re irritated.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And like that, Alex wanted to shout in frustration. He wanted to punch something, preferably Yassen, and get this </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid mission over with.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex snapped out, “maybe I’m just sick of dealing with </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>all the time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen frowned, looking him over and observing the white powder stuck to Alex’s shoe and knee. He said: “you’ve never complained before. And you complain about things, frequently.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well I’m complaining </span>
  <em>
    <span>now,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Alex snapped back, curling and uncurling his hands. He was a fluid thing, ready to run and punch and maybe even bite Yassen’s ear off like a real badass. “And this is stupid. Let’s get this bloody over with already!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex had the impression, going by the weird doe blinking Yassen was demonstrating, that the man was thoroughly baffled. Alex </span>
  <em>
    <span>itched </span>
  </em>
  <span>to move, to grab the nearest lamp and slam it against the man’s face so this stupid thing could be finished with already. Get the mission </span>
  <em>
    <span>over with-.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sniffed, bouncing on the balls of his feet. The hair on his arms stood on end, the cold chill of adrenaline and the lack of decent air conditioning making him ready to move.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen of course noticed everything like a very strange hawk. His eyes locked onto Alex’s arms, then on Alex’s bouncing movements utterly perplexed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, are you going to tie him down again?” Trevor asked from the computer, searching through a website of illegal firearms. “Because as much as this weird tension is fun to watch, some of us have jobs.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex lunged towards Trevor with a snarl on his face. Yassen intercepted, hauling Alex backwards by a forearm across Alex’s chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me at him!” Alex shrieked, furiously kicking out towards the hacker across the room. “Let me punch his teeth out!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good God, where’s the ketamine when you need it?” Trevor muttered, ignoring Alex entirely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen pulled Alex back, flinging him brutishly onto the bed. It didn’t hurt, courtesy of the mattress, but the odd expression Yassen displayed froze Alex in his catlike stance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re feverish,” Yassen said bluntly, voice wavering towards the end to suggest it was somehow a question, “and irritable.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anxiety shuddered through Alex like a sledgehammer, increasing the bass thrumming of his heart through his carotid artery. Alex wet his lips, his mouth suddenly dry, and he said, “well, can you blame me for being freaked? It isn’t every day you get locked in a room with a bloody assassin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s common for </span>
  <em>
    <span>you,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Yassen pointed out with the same baffled expression. “Are you ill? Were you sent on a mission while sick?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“MI6 doesn’t give a </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Alex snarled, fidgeting on the bed, rucking the blankets into thick plush knots. “I’m bloody </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine-.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen reached out for him. Anxiety forced Alex’s instincts to react with hypersensitivity, making him flinch back so far he near fell off the opposite side of the bed. The air, cold (which it was, </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>anything about a fever) made him bristle. Everything was loud and hurt and a fierce sense of paranoia made Alex find everything vaguely terrifying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are not okay,” Yassen said with that same voice and face. He blinked quickly, almost unsure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, no shit,” Trevor said from the computer, clicking away on his keyboard. “Look, want me to try and drone purchase whatever he’s coming off of? He’s sniffling it up so my bet’s on coke, I could maybe get something in a couple of hours to shut him up-.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen spun, addressing Trevor with a truly icy voice. He asked, “what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Trevor paused in his typing. He breathed silently for a second before clearing his throat nervously. He spun on his spinning chair, looking at Yassen with a clearly unsure expression. “Uh, well. I’m...I’m a hacker? And not like- not a high step-.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What did you mean by cocaine?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” Trevor said awkwardly, eyes flicking to Alex quickly, “uh, I know some guys that can get some-.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Yassen denied, striding across the room to tower over Trevor in his chair like a true movie villain, “why are you implying he is taking illicit drugs?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Trevor opened his mouth, then closed it. He swallowed thickly, glancing at Alex on the bed again. Alex was frozen, a sort of sour dread left him immobile. Fight, flight, or freeze the fuck up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh, he’s...obviously on a comedown,” Trevor said nervously. “And that sniffle uh, it’s only on the right side. Which is when you uh, snort something constantly on one side it makes the isolated sniffle. Plus that crazy mood change, and the anxiety. I’d be betting the kid is twenty minutes from paranoid shitting himself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh fuck you!” Alex roared, impulsively lunging off the bed. There was a frantic sprawl, then hurried to kick to try and make the short distance to strangle the little computer mouse- who was being protected by Yassen. The man grabbed Alex again with a hard pinch, locking his thumb in the careful groove by Alex’s shoulder, and kicked his knees out. The carpet wasn’t thick or soft enough to stop Alex’s heavy collision with the floor. Alex shivered, bucking with his bony elbows and knees to try and throw off the larger, and admittedly bulkier man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen said, in that strange voice that was beginning to piss Alex off, “you’ve lost weight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m telling you, either coke or smack.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex thrashed about, struggling to budge the larger man off. He wouldn’t move, even as Alex clawed and struggled, panic influencing his movements until it was little more than a hysterical flailing of limbs with a high-pitched whine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh Christ,” Trevor said from the computer, abandoning his station to stumble across the room into the attached kitchen. The furthest point he could be from Yassen, still pinning Alex to the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen, utterly frozen, said nothing. Alex shrieked, babbling noises distorted under a synthetic rush of absolute </span>
  <em>
    <span>terror. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He shivered, jerking under Yassen while clawing with short fingernails hard enough to tug at the cuticle and split the nail bed. Nothing was calculated or refined, every bit of the Alex Yassen recognized was well abandoned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me up!” Alex screamed, trying to buck and failing horribly, “get </span>
  <em>
    <span>off of me!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“What have you been taking?” Yassen demanded with his voice hissed between his teeth as Alex attempted to headbutt him. Between shaky movements, when Yassen used his shoulder against Alex’s sternum to pin him down and grabbed the boy’s left arm hastily, rotating it back and forth hard enough to nearly dislocate it from the socket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me go!” Alex screamed, choking on his own anxiety-driven spit as nausea surged. “Get off- get </span>
  <em>
    <span>off!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you on?” Yassen returned, abandoning Alex’s arm to straddle the boy and grab Alex’s head with both hands, elbows pinning down Alex’s biceps to the carpet. “Look at me, </span>
  <em>
    <span>look at me.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex’s eyes were white, pupils distorted as his body trembled under raw vicious animal terror. Yassen held him down, even as the bucking turned to the panic-driven movements that put Alex’s ligaments and tendons at risk of adhesion fractures where they pulled away so hard, bone tore with them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex!” Yassen demanded sharply, using his entire body weight to try and stop the boy from hurting himself, “what have you taken? </span>
  <em>
    <span>What have you taken?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- It isn’t- I’m not-,” Alex blubbered, hysterical crying as his eyes flickered everywhere in outright paranoia. An amazing mixture, with violent confrontation influencing drug-induced anxiety to dangerous levels. “It’s not-.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me what you’ve taken!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It isn’t a problem! I’m fine it- it isn’t a problem!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen said something in Russian that Alex couldn’t comprehend, let alone understand. A new haze of confused panic struck him- </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘why can’t I understand him? What is he saying, he’s going to kill you, he’s going to kill you, he’s going to kill you-.’</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex-.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t kill me don’t kill me-,” he wailed, the tendons of his neck bulging as he threw himself back into the carpet violently. Yassen hissed something else, migrating one hand holding Alex’s head to cradle the back and protect it from further damage. “I’m not- it wasn’t a problem, people like me more and-.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you on cocaine? Have you been using cocaine?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no no,” Alex argued, struggling again on the floor, “I don’t- I got it on a mission I’m not…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex could see Yassen’s mind whirring, frantically connecting information in an area he was not knowledgeable about. Yassen primarily dealt in firearms, he didn’t know the individual slang or signs and symptoms for each individual drug constantly shipped and used across back alleys or the highest elite of society.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen twitched, infected the slightest bit with Alex’s anxiety until he asked, urgent and equally alarmed, “are you on heroin? Alex, have you been taking heroin?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex cried against his will, whining high in the back of his throat. His right nostril dripped, always hurting a bit on that sign in his sinuses now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen swore, loud and aggressively as he let Alex up. The man stepped back, pacing back and forth across the small hotel room. He ran one hand through his short hair, then pinched the bridge of his nose hissing something quietly under his breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Trevor, hiding behind the fridge in the kitchen asked nervously, “do...you want me to order smack?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>No,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Yassen hissed furiously, a thicker accent tainted his words. “He is not- he’s been taking </span>
  <em>
    <span>heroin.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex slid back, kicking and scooting across the floor to take shelter in the far corner near the bed and the side table. The little wifi dongle glowed a happy cyan, and Alex felt like he would be shot any second. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He curled in on himself, nails biting into his (now bruising) biceps as the mantra of </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘he’s going to kill me, he’s going to kill me-,’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>cycled across and through his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen swore again, inhaling so heavily it could have been a sigh. He said something else, a melodic Russian curse before the man rumbled a quiet noise universally understood as frustration.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, right,” Trevor said unnecessarily from the kitchen, “well, uh, can you...send a new agent then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Yassen hissed towards him, bristling visibly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh,” Trevor paused, pointing towards Alex (terrified in a corner shivering violently) with one finger, “well, you have the, </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘aw shit, time to detox,’ </span>
  </em>
  <span>look on your face. No problem, I get it. I’ve been in a few houses, I know your priorities. I can drone you some meds, like for the side effects.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen balked, and Trevor hurriedly added, “only a true bastard of a person fucks with someone when they’re helping a friend through withdrawal. Get out of here, scary Russian man. Send someone else so I don’t get shived but you’ve got priorities.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yassen clearly had never experienced something of the sort. Alex in the corner felt a muscle jerk in his back. He whined quietly, pulling his knees to his face as the world warped and turned into a depressing hellhole of existence that Alex dearly wanted to escape.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll contact the required individuals,” Yassen said breezily, finally in an area he knew how to coordinate. “I’ll be out of contact for the upcoming few days-.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“At least a week,” Trevor corrected, eyes flickering to Alex in the corner, “and uh, you’ll probably want some blankets. And a lot of water and shit for recovery.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Recovery,” Yassen echoed hauntingly, “right.”</span>
</p>
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